Philippa Gregory - The Constant Princess

My women come in with me. Lady Elizabeth Boleyn places a sweet-smelling pomander on my bedside table. Lady Elizabeth and Lady Anne, sisters to the Duke of Buckingham straighten a tapestry, one at each corner, laughing over whether it leans to one side or the other. María de Salinas is smiling, standing by the great bed that is new-hung with dark curtains. Lady Margaret Pole is arranging the cradle for the baby at the foot of the bed. She looks up and smiles at me as I come in and I remember that she is a mother, she will know what is to be done.

“I shall want you to take charge of the royal nurseries,” I suddenly blurt out to her, my affection for her and my sense of needing the advice and comfort of an older woman is too much for me.

There is a little ripple of amusement among my women. They know that I am normally very formal, such an appointment should come through the head of my household after consultation with dozens of people.

Lady Margaret smiles at me. “I knew you would,” she says, speaking in reply as intimate as myself. “I have been counting on it.”

“Without royal invitation?” Lady Elizabeth Boleyn teases. “For shame, Lady Margaret! Thrusting yourself forwards!”

That makes us all laugh at the thought of Lady Margaret, that most dignified of women, as someone craving patronage.

“I know you will care for him as if he were your own son,” I whisper to her.

She takes my hand and helps me to the bed. I am heavy and ungainly. I have this constant pain in my belly that I try to hide.

“God willing,” she says quietly.

Henry comes in to bid me farewell. His face is flushed with emotion and his mouth is working, he looks more like a boy than a king. I take his hands and I kiss him tenderly on the mouth. “My love,” I say. “Pray for me, I am sure everything will go well for us.”

“I shall go to Our Lady of Walsingham to give thanks,” he tells me again. “I have written to the nunnery there and promised them great rewards if they will intercede with Our Lady for you. They are praying for you now, my love. They assure me that they are praying all the time.”

“God is good,” I say. I think briefly of the Moorish doctor who told me that I was not with child and I push his pagan folly from my mind. “This is my destiny and it is my mother’s wish and God’s will,” I say.

“I so wish your mother could be here,” Henry says clumsily. I do not let him see me flinch.

“Of course,” I say quietly. “And I am sure she is watching me from al-Yan—” I cut off the words before I can say them. “From paradise,” I say smoothly. “From heaven.”

“Can I get you anything?” he asks. “Before I leave, can I fetch you anything?”

I do not laugh at the thought of Henry—who never knows where anything is—running errands for me at this late stage. “I have everything I need,” I assure him. “And my women will care for me.”

He straightens up, very kingly, and he looks around at them. “Serve your mistress well,” he says firmly. To Lady Margaret he says, “Please send for me at once if there is any news, at any time, day or night.” Then he kisses me farewell very tenderly, and when he goes out, they close the door behind him and I am alone with my ladies, in the seclusion of my confinement.

I am glad to be confined. The shady, peaceful bedroom will be my haven, I can rest for a while in the familiar company of women. I can stop playacting the part of a fertile and confident queen, and be myself. I put aside all doubts. I will not think and I will not worry. I will wait patiently until my baby comes, and then I will bring him into the world without fear, without screaming. I am determined to be confident that this child, who has survived the loss of his twin, will be a strong baby. And I, who have survived the loss of my first child, will be a brave mother. Perhaps it might be true that we have surmounted grief and loss together: this baby and I.

I wait. All through March I wait, and I ask them to pin back the tapestry that covers the window so I can smell the scent of spring on the air and hear the seagulls as they call over the high tides on the river.

Nothing seems to be happening; not for my baby nor for me. The midwives ask me if I feel any pain, and I do not. Nothing more than the dull ache I have had for a long time. They ask if the baby has quickened, if I feel him kick me, but, to tell truth, I do not understand what they mean. They glance at one another and say overloudly, overemphatically, that it is a very good sign, a quiet baby is a strong baby: he must be resting.

The unease that I have felt right from the start of this second pregnancy, I put right away from me. I will not think of the warning from the Moorish doctor, nor of the compassion in his face. I am determined not to seek out fear, not to run towards disaster. But April comes and I can hear the patter of rain on the window, and then feel the heat of the sunshine, and still nothing happens.

My gowns that strained so tight across my belly through the winter, feel looser in April, and then looser yet. I send out all the women but María, and I unlace my gown and show her my belly and ask if she thinks I am losing my girth.

“I don’t know,” she says; but I can tell by her aghast face that my belly is smaller, that it is obvious that there is no baby in there, ready to be born.

In another week it is obvious to everyone that my belly is going down, I am growing slim again. The midwives try to tell me that sometimes a woman’s belly diminishes just before her baby is born, as her baby drops down to be born, or some such arcane knowledge. I look at them coldly, and I wish I could send for a decent physician who would tell me the truth.

“My belly is smaller and my course has come this very day,” I say to them flatly. “I am bleeding. As you know, I have bled every month since I lost the girl. How can I be with child?”

They flutter their hands, and cannot say. They don’t know. They tell me that these are questions for my husband’s respected physician. It was he who had said that I was still with child in the first place, not them. They had never said that I was with child; they had merely been called in to assist with a delivery. It was not they who had said that I was carrying a baby.

“But what did you think, when he said there was a twin?” I demand. “Did you not agree when he said that I had lost a child and yet kept one?”

They shake their heads. They did not know.

“You must have thought something,” I say impatiently. “You saw me lose my baby. You saw my belly stay big. What could cause that if not another child?”

“God’s will,” says one of them helplessly.

“Amen,” I say, and it costs me a good deal to say it.

“I want to see that physician again,” Katherine said quietly to María de Salinas.

“Your Grace, it may be that he is not in London. He travels in the household of a French count. It may be that he has gone.”

“Find out if he is still in London, or when they expect him to return,” the queen said. “Don’t tell anyone that it is I who have asked for him.”

María de Salinas looked at her mistress with sympathy. “You want him to advise you how to have a son?” she asked in a low voice.

“There is not a university in England that studies medicine,” Katherine said bitterly. “There is not one that teaches languages. There is not one that teaches astronomy, or mathematics, geometry, geography, cosmography, or even the study of animals, or plants. The universities of England are about as much use as a monastery full of monks coloring in the margins of sacred texts.”